Pipe
Self-hosted unified inbox + AI that reads it for you
Start new thread

Pipe - Self-hosted unified inbox + AI that reads it for you

by•
Your private second brain. Pipe merges WhatsApp, email, Telegram, Teams and more into one thread per person, then an AI reads it all — summarizing long threads and voice notes, telling you who's waiting on a reply, and drafting replies in your voice. Self-hosted and MIT-licensed: your messages, media and a daily encrypted backup live on your own server, never a company's. Local AI by default — nothing private leaves your box.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Maker
📌
Hey Product Hunt 👋 I built Pipe because I got tired of my life being scattered across six apps I don't control. My conversations — WhatsApp chats, emails, years of voice notes and photos inside them — all live on someone else's servers, under someone else's terms. They can rate-limit me, lock me out, change the rules, get breached, or just shut down. The day that happens, the record of my relationships is gone, and there was never really an export button that gave me all of it. Pipe flips that. It pulls every channel — WhatsApp, email, Telegram, Teams, Instagram — into a single thread per person, on hardware you control. Then it adds an AI layer that actually reads everything: it summarizes long threads and voice notes, gives you a daily brief, tells you who's waiting on a reply, and drafts responses in your own style. The AI runs locally by default (Ollama + local whisper) — the private jobs are hard-wired to never leave your box. And because it's yours, it's a real archive: a daily encrypted backup of everything — messages, the WhatsApp bridge sessions, the irreplaceable media. Restore is tested, not theoretical. "Export" is just copying a folder. Stack is deliberately boring so it lasts: vanilla Node + SQLite + a PWA, zero framework. MIT-licensed, single-tenant, self-hostable in one `docker compose up`. Honest status: it runs in production for me, every day — but it's early. If you self-host, I'd love your feedback and issues. Rather not run it yourself? There's a managed version that funds the project → pipe.one Ask me anything — happy to go deep on the architecture, the WhatsApp bridge, or the local-AI privacy model. 🙏

Privacy-first unified inbox is genuinely useful. One thing that would make it indispensable for me: a quick "context on this person" sidebar that surfaces any shared files, upcoming deadlines, or open promises you both made in the thread, so I can catch up on a contact in seconds without scrolling. Would feel like a true second brain rather than just a merged chat.

Maker

 This is exactly where I'm heading, Claire 🙌

A lot of it is already there. The per-person view pulls together all the shared media, and it keeps a source-backed list of open asks and promises from your conversations. Every to-do links back to the original message it came from, so nothing gets made up or taken out of context.

If you have a calendar connected, upcoming deadlines also appear alongside the conversation, and there's a lightweight relationship graph for each contact.

One thing I'm really excited about is a simple "catch me up on this person in 5 seconds" view that brings all of that together in one place. I'd love to send it your way once it's ready, if you're interested.

honestly the "drafting replies in your voice" bit is what i'd care most about, but right now it sounds a bit like a black box. would love to see a way to actually train it on past messages per contact so it picks up little things like how i sign off to my mum vs my manager, basically just make the tone matching feel less generic.

Maker

 Totally with you, River. That's actually one of the things I dislike most about AI writing too.

Right now it learns from your actual message history with each person, so the way you'd text your mum naturally ends up different from how you'd write to your manager. It also builds on your overall writing style, not just a single conversation.

If it gets something wrong, you can simply rewrite it the way you would have said it, and it learns from that over time.

And because it's MIT licensed and self-hosted, none of this is hidden behind a black box. The prompts and drafting logic are all in the repo, so anyone can inspect them, change them, or build on top of them.

If you end up giving it a try, I'd genuinely love to hear what you think.

Congrats on launching Pipe! Self-hosted unified inbox + AI that reads it for you is a genuinely exciting direction. Cheering you on and wishing you a fantastic launch! 🚀

Maker

 Thanks a ton Zvonimir 🙏 Means a lot. If you ever spin it up, throw the rough edges at me — that's what actually makes it better.